Welcome to my blog!

We find ourselves in challenging times. To meet them more easily, I believe involves challenging ourselves to move beyond old, established habits and patterns.

Perhaps I am a bit late fully entering into the 21st century by starting my blog now, in 2010! In that my work and message has so much to do with slowing down and settling into a deeper knowing beyond and prior to our cultural modes, it may be appropriate to step extra slowly into the world of blogging and other cyber realities.

I suspect that, if you are drawn to my blog and the words here, you may also value this slower, deeper state we are all capable of. I invite you to read on and regularly, and hope the words below can support you in enhancing your ability to be, even in the midst of all the doing required in our modern world.

Friday, 29 June 2012

Living From The Heart

“Mr. Duffy lived a short distance from his body.”

- James Joyce,
Dubliners

Your heart began beating when you were a little embryo
inside your mother, just four weeks after you were conceived. It continues even
as you read these pages, and will continue for the rest of your life. The heart
is obviously a master at commitment! Is it any wonder that it draws us into and
assists us in staying in our relationships?

Throughout our lives, our hearts guide us and inspire us.
When we listen to our hearts, we deepen into the love that is our essence. When
we deny our heart intelligence, we suffer.

We live in a culture dominated by left brain intellectual
thinking, analysis and judgment. Too often, our hearts and their wide, holistic
perception are left behind to gather cobwebs and unresolved emotional pain.

Our hearts are sensitive. We have more nerve cells from
heart to brain than vice versa. Our hearts provide important information for
survival. And for humans, survival means relationship.

Social Beings

Have you ever wondered at the intricacy of human interaction
and how apparently simple, innocent little infants can learn to communicate
with complex language and develop the multitude of skills required to function
within society? Things you probably do every day, like walking, driving,
dressing, brushing your teeth, buying groceries and having conversations all
require an immense amount of learning.

Intelligence used to be measured by how well and fast a
person could answer questions involving language, math and other mental skills.
In recent years, other areas of intelligence have been revealed as being at
least as important in life. These include our emotional and social
intelligence.

We now know that little ones learn through relationship. Our
brains develop through interactions with primary caregivers. At birth, we are
hard wired for relationship. Newborns are designed to be with mom. Little ones
recognize and prefer their mother’s smell and face immediately after birth.
Their eyes focus well at the exact distance between the mother’s breast and
face. They are designed to be there, resting on her heart, her breast available
to suck on, her face available to gaze at.

According to Joseph Chilton Pearce, the stress hormones
required for the arduous passage of birth, continue until the baby senses mom’s
heartbeat. Then, the little one knows the birth is complete and it is time to
rest. This heart to heart communication is essential to health and survival
from the very beginning. Without it, the baby’s system continues to be on
sympathetic drive. If mom is not available, or if she is stressed, baby cannot
settle, and bonding is impaired.

Babies feel safe and can relax and grow when they have the
social contact they need. Premature babies gain weight faster and are generally
healthier and discharged from hospital sooner when they have skin to skin
contact, being held close to their parents in what is called “kangaroo care.” Babies
deprived of loving contact do not thrive and may even die.

We are designed to be social beings, and our hearts are
integral to this interactive state. In the early 90s, Stephen Porges introduced
Polyvagal Theory with its associated concept of the social engagement system,
or social nervous system, as an essential aspect of our autonomic functioning enabling
us to survive, as well as to thrive.

We used to divide the autonomic nervous system into two
parts, the sympathetic (mobilization/fight-flight) nervous system and the
parasympathetic (rest and rejuvenation or immobilization/freeze/play dead)
nervous system. Porges pointed out that, in case of threat, humans do not
immediately react with fight-flight or freeze. We first seek to make contact
with others. We look to see how others assess the situation to help determine
if we are safe. This communication involves a more recently evolved heart-face
neural connection, including part of the vagus nerve.

Having relatively small, weak bodies compared to other
animals, our survival often depends on our ability to interact and cooperate as
groups. While a tiger can easily overtake and devour one of us, a group can
scare it away or even attack it with the tools or weapons we have created
together. We can also hide in the shelter we have constructed through group
process. I may not be able to build a house on my own, but my kin can come
together to do this easily. A baby cannot hide or fight or flee alone, but can
be carried to safety by an adult.

Babies, like others, respond to threat first with the social
engagement system. They look for mom, and cry to communicate their distress and
need for her. If mom does not come or their needs are not addressed, their cry
changes. It begins to have an angry tone, as sympathetic nervous system is
activated. Circulation is diverted away from the non-essential organs toward
the large muscles needed for fight or flight. The heart speeds up to meet this
effort. Ironically, however, babies cannot fight or flee. If this sympathetic
surge doesn’t get their needs met, they eventually retreat into a
parasympathetic freeze mode, although the sympathetic impulse remains beneath
the ice. These frozen “good” babies are often very quiet and undemanding. No
one notices that they are undemanding because they are not really present. They
have dissociated, like the deer about to be eaten by the tiger.

Dissociation is a kindness provided by nature that reduces
the animal’s suffering if it is caught and hurt or eaten by its pursuer. In
dissociative states, we do not feel the pain because we are not connected to
it. Unfortunately, our connection with others is also muffled in this state.
Our hearts may sense another’s love or caring, but we have disconnected from
our hearts because they also feel our pain.

Children developing in this dissociated state may live their
lives within a protective shell. They protect themselves from feeling hurt,
betrayal, grief, rage, or terror and in the process tend to miss out on love.
Their relationships reflect and reinforce their fears. They live within a
psychic bubble, represented in the physical body by tight, contracted tissues
around the heart.

To varying degrees, this dissociated, disconnected state is
epidemic in our modern, western world. We live “a short distance from our
bodies,” with a wall around our hearts, longing for love, literally dying for
real connection. How can we re-embody recover our hearts? How can we come home?

The journey home can be informed by our early beginnings.
When we first arrived, when we first were forming, our hearts initiated our
embodiment.

Embryo Heart

Until the fourth week after conception, when our hearts fold
into our center and begin beating, our embryo body is relatively flat and two-dimensional.
As the heart folds in, we have a place to be, a place to embody. This fact is
reflected in many spiritual traditions holding that our souls do not fully
enter our bodies until the fourth week.

In that the heart actually begins its development and
function outside of what will become the body of the embryo, it seems natural
that the heart would also specialize in relationship. It knows intimately, from
its early beginnings as little blood islands forming in the extra-embryonic
mesoderm around the embryo, about connecting within the space between.

Mesoderm is our first inner layer, established early in our embryonic
development as our midline is forming within an otherwise apparently
undifferentiated clump of cells. Embryologist Jaap Van der Waal points out that
this third inner layer forming between the endoderm and ectoderm is misnamed.
It is not really a derm, or skin. It is an interior. He therefore prefers to
call it “meso.” It is like the filling of a sandwich. Some meso finds its way
to the exterior mass of cells around the embryo body that will develop into the
placenta and umbilical cord. It is within these extra-embryonic (outside
embryo) tissues that the blood first forms.

As we begin to take form, the blood finds its way into the
body, flowing up to the top or head end of the tiny embryo, where it pauses and
then flows back down. It is here, at the head end, that the heart begins to
form. In the fourth week after conception, as the nervous system grows up and
around it, the heart folds into the more central location we associate as its
proper place. It remains a major fulcrum for development and being for the rest
of our lives.

In the little embryo, the face grows directly on the heart.
The arms start as little buds on either side of the heart, growing around it,
as if already in embrace. Throughout our lives, our faces and arms express our
hearts, and connect us with other people.

Recovering the Heart

When we have become disconnected from our hearts, our health
also suffers. The research of HeartMath Institute (www.heartmath.org) has revealed that heart
coherence, associated with positive emotional states like appreciation,
gratitude and love enhance our health and general state of well-being. Negative
emotional states, like anger and impatience relate to chaotic heart rhythms and
issues with mental and physical health. HeartMath has also demonstrated that we
can use our minds to support our hearts. We know also that mindfulness
practices support our health and release of stress.

It is simple to begin re-connecting with your heart. You
might begin (or return) right now by placing a hand over your heart area and
listening. What do you sense there? Can you sense your breath moving the
tissues under your hand? Can you feel your heart beating? You may find yourself
beginning to feel calmer just by listening this way to your heart.

Our understanding of embryology can also inform our
relationship with our hearts. Recent research has shown that, at least in frog
embryos, physical formation is generated by shifting patterns in the
bio-electric field of the embryo. You can watch this on an amazing film easily
accessible on You Tube.

We know that our bodies are bio-electric phenomena. Every
cell, organ, and tissue generates an electro-magnetic field via its metabolism.
Science is learning, however, what healers have known for centuries, that our
bodies are constantly being formed within an energetic field. What is true for
the tiny embryo is equally true for you as you read this page. You are not
fully and finally formed, any more than the embryo is. You are in formation,
dissolving and re-forming in relation to the context you find yourself in each
moment.

Cell biologist Bruce Lipton in discussing epigenetics,
points out that our genes are not capable of turning themselves on and off.
Genes respond to the conditions they meet. They are turned on and off in the
womb in large part in response to the mother’s perception of her environment as
safe or not. Later in life, they respond to our thoughts and beliefs.

We can affect the context our genes interact with in part
through where we orient our minds. Take a moment to check in just now. What are
you thinking about? How often do you find yourself complaining about the
weather, the news, your finances, your health, your looks, your work, whatever
it is you complain about? How often do you take time to appreciate what you
have, and practice gratitude? What is one thing you can be thankful for in this
moment? How does your heart feel as you orient to appreciation and gratitude? This
simple act can shift your heart rhythms and health toward coherence.

From my practices of Biodynamic Craniosacral Therapy and
Continuum Movement, I have learned that our thinking, our beliefs, and our
bodies seem to shift more easily when we slow down into a relative state of
stillness where our old form can dissolve. In speed, we tend to operate on
habit. As we deepen into a more fluidic state, we have more options to re-form.
We can put ourselves back together as we are accustomed to being, or we can
re-construct ourselves within a new and different context.

Within a Biodynamic session, the context includes being held
and reflected by a relatively neutral practitioner who is orienting to the
original Biodynamic forces that underlie our original embryological formation.
While acknowledging the effects of conditional forces, the Biodynamic
practitioner holds these old wounds within the wider context of the original
blueprint we all on some level seek to return to. This includes the open heart
we all long for but also so often fear. How vulnerable are we willing to allow
ourselves to be? When openness has at some point in the past become associated
with pain, we tend to avoid it. Through resonance with the practitioner
intentional state of being, the client’s system can begin to resonate more
strongly with its original intent, letting go its hold on fearful trauma
patterns.

When old trauma is held within a larger context of health,
resource and support, it can melt away in relatively gentle ways. We then have
the opportunity to open to our true nature, to whom we are and were prior to
the trauma.

In Continuum Movement, we also dissolve and re-form within a
different context. This includes our understanding that something else may be
possible. We can be supported within the larger energetic field created by our
practice within a group. The sounds, breaths and awareness of Continuum, like
mindfulness practices, enable us to orient to something deeper than our
patterns. As we practice dissolving tissue structures, we enter into a fluid
primordial state of being. Like in Biodynamics, we rest in relative stillness,
where our history becomes less important. We find ourselves accessing vibrancy
and creativity we may not have previously imagined.

Heart to Heart: Being
in Resonance

For me, Continuum has been an amazing journey of heart
opening. I had practiced and taught various modes of opening and living from
the heart for years before coming to Continuum. After living my first twenty or
so years from the neck up, I had shifted down in my body and had managed to
become much healthier and more embodied.

When I deepened into Continuum practice, I was shocked to
discover my sense of my heart dramatically changing. While my heart had seemed
to me before this to be a relatively solid mass about the size of my fist in
the central area of my chest, it suddenly began to grow and soften. It seemed
to extend from my throat down to my pubic bone. Instead of being a clump of
emotional pain in my chest, my heart began to sing to me the songs of all I encountered.
I began to sense the pain of others across the planet in a bittersweet way. The
woman who had lived from the neck up for so many years began to know the
sweetness of tears. Tears not just of my old pain, but tears of compassion,
tears of tenderness, tears of love, tears of appreciation and gratitude. It
seems impossible to experience such tears without an accompanying sense of joy.
It is also impossible to feel alone.

Our hearts know our true connectedness. They resonate with
so many other hearts. The bio-magenetic field of the heart is the largest in
the body, 500 times larger than that of the brain. Our fields overlap with
others frequently, but we also sense through our hearts far beyond the physical
distance we can measure of the heart field. I heard recently of some research
showing that two hearts in resonance with each can respond to each other from
across the planet. If one shifts from into coherence, from fear to love, for
example, the other will, too. Imagine how powerfully we can affect each other
with our sensitive hearts!

Our hearts are such an essential aspect of our humanity. How
much longer can we deny them?

Your heart is alive and waiting for you. It beckons. It may
wait patiently and compassionately, but it can only wait for so long. How long
will you wait?

4 comments:

fascinating stuff, thank you for this information...i found it very insightful and informative re my own situation....i was adopted at 6 weeks of age and when i was born my mother was not allowed to touch me!....i can see the consequences playing out in my life since...dissociated so much and for far too long!....you mention how your heart now fills your inner experience inside and it sounds beautiful.....any tips on how one can step into that space completely and let go of this mind based living once and for all??!

I don't know why I am just seeing your comment now a year and a half after the fact! A belated thank you for your comment! In my experience, there are many therapeutic and meditative approaches that can support one in being more in the heart and less in the head. We do need our minds as well to function but we don't need to be so locked in the intellect. I work a lot with mindfulness, being aware of the sensations around the heart, putting a hand over it, sensing the heart beat. I find practicing being vs. doing very useful. Continuum Movement is particularly helpful as a practice to be in the heart. Anything that supports your nervous system in settling so you can be more present in present time can help open your heart. Just a few suggestions if you are still there reading this after all this time!